Doink The Clown
After making appearances in late 1992 in the crowd and at ringside, playing tricks on the fans and wrestlers, the Doink character made his in-ring debut in the WWF in 1993, originally wrestling as a technically sound but mentally unstable heel. As a villain, Doink played cruel jokes on both fans and wrestlers in order to amuse himself and put them off guard. Some of his villainous pranks included tripping The Big Boss Man with a trip wire, dumping water on Marty Jannetty and attacking Crush with a loaded prosthetic arm. He clashed with Crush at WrestleMania IX, a match which he won after the appearance of an identical Doink (played by Steve Keirn) from underneath the ring. Doink also briefly feuded with Randy Savage on an early edition of Monday Night Raw, and Bret Hart, after substituting for an "injured" then-heel Jerry Lawler, at SummerSlam in 1993. Doink then turned on Lawler on the September 4 episode of WWF Wrestling Challenge in Lawler's The King's Court segment, making Burger King jokes to amuse the crowd and eventually hitting Lawler with a pie. Matt Borne, the original man behind Doink, was fired for re-occurring drug abuses, eventually leaving the gimmick (after bouncing through a few others) to Ray Apollo. Now as a fan favorite and with a new dwarf sidekick Dink, Doink encountered Lawler again the following year in a match at Survivor Series. In this match, Doink and Dink teamed with Wink and Pink to meet Lawler's dwarf team of 'little kings' Queazy, Cheezy, and Sleazy. As a fan favorite, Doink was more of a comic relief character, but continued to pull less cruel pranks on other wrestlers, mostly villains such as Lawler and Bobby Heenan. Doink and Dink also battled with Bam Bam Bigelow and his 'main squeeze' Luna Vachon in a feud that culminated at WrestleMania X. One of Doink's final appearances in his original run was at the Slammy Awards when he was attacked by Stone Cold Steve Austin amidst chants of "kill the clown". Following his departure from the WWF, Borne appeared in Extreme Championship Wrestling for a handful of matches as Doink in a blue and green clown suit, setting up an angle where Shane Douglas criticized Vince McMahon for turning a talented wrestler like Borne into a comic relief character, and claimed that he knew how to bring out Borne's full potential. Borne then changed his ring name to "Borne Again", and continued wearing the clown suit, but without the wig and with a minimal amount of face paint. Doink made random appearances in the next decade. He competed in the Gimmick Battle Royal at WrestleMania X-Seven. He showed up in the A.P.A. Bar Room Brawl at Vengeance in 2003. He also fought Rob Conway on an October 2005 episode of Raw. On the June 2, 2007 edition of Saturday Night's Main Event, Dwaine Henderson portrayed Doink for the WWE, teaming up with Eugene and Kane to defeat Umaga, Viscera, and Kevin Thorn. On Raw XV, the 15th-anniversary Raw special on December 10, 2007, Doink participated in the 15th Anniversary Battle Royal. On March 15, 2009, WWE.com announced that Doink would be featured in the video game, WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 as a downloadable character along with Vader, Earthquake, and the Bushwhackers. This was the first time in years that Doink was featured in a video game.